Tile is an awkward thing to deliver. It is heavy, breakable, and frequently bound for an address designed for residents rather than freight. TileBar, the tile and bath retailer, already had a broker arranging its transportation. Yet having someone book the truck had left a more interesting question unanswered: were these the right trucks?
In September 2026, Redwood Logistics reported more than $2 million in combined procurement and transportation savings for TileBar. It introduced two carriers suited to residential deliveries and difficult cargo, retained many incumbents, and reworked distribution flows. The revealing detail is the restraint. Better results did not require replacing everybody. They required seeing beyond one broker’s network.
- Redwood combines freight execution with systems integration.
- Its open 4PL model lets shippers mix partners and technology.
- Customer cases point to carrier choice, cleaner data, and fewer manual tasks.
The expensive gap between good tools
Redwood sells access to that wider picture. The Chicago company arranges freight, manages transportation, implements software, and connects systems. A manufacturer can hire it to move a shipment; a larger shipper can ask it to coordinate carriers, warehouses, technology vendors, and the decisions connecting them. Redwood calls this an open fourth-party logistics model, or 4PL.
The distinction matters when each participant is competent and the whole arrangement remains cumbersome. A warehouse knows what is ready. A carrier knows where its truck is. Finance knows what the order costs. If those answers sit in separate systems, employees become the interface: copying, emailing, checking, and checking again. The organizational chart acquires a very expensive layer of human glue.
RedwoodConnect, its proprietary no-code integration platform, joins transportation, warehouse, enterprise, and partner systems through reusable connections and workflows. Redwood also supplies the logistics specialists who configure them. Its pitch is practical: keep useful technology and make it cooperate. The appeal lies in combining software work with people who understand what a shipment actually requires.
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The freight bill can help buy the fix
Consider Core Health & Fitness, the equipment manufacturer behind brands including StairMaster and Schwinn. Pandemic disruption and a changing global supply chain made coordination harder. Redwood implemented Oracle Transportation Management and Global Trade Management, connected project44 for shipment visibility, and examined less-than-truckload freight rates.
Redwood’s case study reports a 9% reduction in those freight charges. It also says rate savings could fund some technology enhancements. That is a useful reversal of the usual purchasing conversation. Instead of asking operations to tolerate disruption while waiting for a software payoff, examine whether an operating improvement can help pay for the change.
The percentage describes one customer’s freight charges, not a universal discount or a return on the entire project. For a buyer, the sensible calculation starts with a baseline: freight spend, implementation fees, recurring charges, internal labor, and service quality. Savings deserve applause only after the invoices and the delivery experience agree.
A salad needs an answer, not a dashboard
At Taylor Farms, the task was pleasingly unglamorous: make order-status communication consistent. Redwood developed transportation-system functionality that generated customer emails automatically and simplified communication with carriers. Fresh produce has little patience for administrative elegance. An update that arrives without someone composing it is a small improvement repeated across a working day.
Hollister, the healthcare-products manufacturer, had manual tracking and no transportation management system. Redwood implemented Oracle’s platform, connected project44 and other systems, and provided truckload and less-than-truckload services. Its published case describes lower freight charges and reduced staffing demands, without attaching a percentage.
An electronics-manufacturing case makes the less glamorous work explicit: Redwood cleaned and normalized data, resolved time-zone conversions, and accommodated different freight modes. A connector cannot rescue an ambiguous timestamp by charm alone. The expertise sits partly in recognizing those details before a confident-looking delivery estimate reaches the customer.
Buying what the company had not built
Redwood began in 2001 as Transportation Solutions Group. Todd Berger was one of four founders. Its early opportunity was helping smaller and midsize shippers arrange transportation with better information systems. The Redwood name arrived in 2015; the business subsequently expanded through acquisitions as well as its own growth.
One acquisition exposed a specific limitation. When Redwood bought Strive Logistics in 2019, CEO Mark Yeager told FreightWaves it would adopt Strive’s LoadRunner system because it supplied business-intelligence and process-automation features missing from Redwood’s existing platform. The response was concrete: buy a capability, then use the acquired technology.
Private equity supplied another ingredient. CI Capital combined Redwood with Simplified Logistics in 2018; AEA Investors acquired Redwood in December 2021. CI reported tenfold revenue growth and seven add-on acquisitions during its ownership. Scale here reflects a company assembled through deals, people, and operating investment. It should not be read as a clean measure of organic software growth.
The next sale begins before the software decision
“We spent two years getting this right.”
Erin Breen, Chief Growth Officer · on Redwood Advisory, October 2026
On October 1, 2026, Redwood launched Redwood Advisory through its acquisition of JBF Consulting. The new practice covers strategy, technology selection, data readiness, adoption, and continuing improvement. Chief Growth Officer Erin Breen said customers had asked Redwood to participate before transportation-system selections or AI programs were settled.
That follows March’s purchases of EELCO, adding customs and warehousing expertise at the U.S.-Mexico border, and Stridas, adding managed-transportation depth. September’s Augment partnership connects its AI teammate, Augie, to logistics systems through RedwoodConnect. The recurring wager is that new tools need access to existing operations.
The commercial offer spans freight brokerage, managed services, consulting, integration work, and software. Buyers comparing Redwood with C.H. Robinson, RXO, or another logistics provider should compare the proposed scope, rather than the vocabulary. An enterprise integration project and a spot truckload shipment solve different purchasing problems.
There is a method worth copying: inspect the handoffs before adding another tool. Identify the repeated manual task, verify the data it depends on, and measure the operating result. For a small shipper with simple routes and functioning systems, extensive orchestration may add little. With poor source data or nobody responsible for exceptions, automation can merely circulate confusion faster.